incubate
Americanverb (used with object)
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incubates,
present (3rd person singular)
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incubated,
past participle, past
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incubating
present participle
-
to sit upon (eggs) for the purpose of hatching.
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to hatch (eggs), as by sitting upon them or by artificial heat.
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to maintain at a favorable temperature and in other conditions promoting development, as cultures of bacteria or prematurely born infants.
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to develop or produce as if by hatching; give form to.
His brain was incubating schemes for raising money.
verb (used without object)
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incubates,
present (3rd person singular)
-
incubated,
past participle, past
-
incubating
present participle
-
to sit upon eggs.
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to undergo incubation.
-
A plan was slowly incubating in her mind.
verb
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(of birds) to supply (eggs) with heat for their development, esp by sitting on them
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to cause (eggs, embryos, bacteria, etc) to develop, esp in an incubator or culture medium
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(intr) (of eggs, embryos, bacteria, etc) to develop in favourable conditions, esp in an incubator
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(intr) (of disease germs) to remain inactive in an animal or human before causing disease
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to develop or cause to develop gradually; foment or be fomented
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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incubatesimple
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incubatessimple
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have incubatedperfect
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has incubatedperfect
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am incubatingprogressive
-
are incubatingprogressive
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is incubatingprogressive
-
have been incubatingperfect progressive
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has been incubatingperfect progressive
Past
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incubatedsimple
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had incubatedperfect
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was incubatingprogressive
-
were incubatingprogressive
-
had been incubatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of incubate
First recorded in 1635–45; from Latin incubātus, past participle of incubāre “to lie or recline on, to sit on (eggs),” equivalent to in- “in” + cub(āre) “to sit, lie down” + -ātus past participle suffix; see in- 2, -ate 1. Cf. incumbent, concubine
Explanation
When a chicken sits on an egg, it incubates it. To incubate means to keep something safe and warm so that it can grow. The word can be used metaphorically to mean to keep something safe in order for it to have time to grow. You incubate a plan or an idea before bringing it into the world, or, metaphorically speaking, hatching it. Premature or particularly small babies are placed into an incubator when they are born. This warm, clean environment helps them to grow.
Vocabulary lists containing incubate
Words of a Feather: Unflappable Avian Vocabulary
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocabulary for April 15–April 21, 2023
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The Other Side
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Among its members are Ulukaya, who has promised to give away most of his fortune, and plans to use part of Chobani’s new city offices to incubate food startups.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
While Nile crocodile eggs naturally incubate in underground nests in the wild, zoos typically hatch them in carefully controlled incubators, closely monitoring the temperature and humidity.
From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026
Since the pair formed in 2018, fans have watched them weather freezing winter storms, incubate eggs and dote on fuzzy chicks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 10, 2026
"It may take a few hours or days, but let it incubate in your brain," he explains.
From BBC ● Dec. 11, 2024
The shells of her eggs would be thin and eventually smash when she tried to incubate them.
From "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
For more than 70 years, most annual flu vaccines have come from a manufacturing process that incubates the virus in chicken eggs.
From Slate ● Aug. 6, 2026
"Twitter has long served as the place where our national conversation incubates and develops," he says in the video.
From BBC ● May 9, 2023
Stockton also incubates eggs and cares for the turtles in the first year of their lives.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 8, 2022
He’s among the public health authorities fearing the delta variant will morph into something worse as it incubates and spreads.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 3, 2021
The emergence of hiv was subtle: it incubates for years in a human host before it kills the host.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
Founded in 2008, Betaworks was originally a venture studio, where it incubated social-media startups, including TweetDeck and Giphy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
It sees vulnerable curlew nests taken from the wild and artificially incubated.
From BBC ● May 31, 2026
Researchers in Taiwan combined heat transfer simulations with physical experiments to better understand how these dinosaurs incubated their eggs.
From Science Daily ● Mar. 19, 2026
It was fitting that the dogfight took place at Edwards Air Force Base, a vast desert facility where Chuck Yeager broke the speed of sound and the military has incubated its most secret aerospace advances.
From Seattle Times ● May 3, 2024
The longer she incubated, the more deeply she went into the trance of incubation.
From "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
“I had a chalupa yesterday to celebrate taco Tuesday. It had lettuce on it. Do I now have Cyclospora parasite incubating in my body?” one commenter wrote.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
The team have been "headstarting" the birds, Perkins explained, by taking in eggs from wild nests and incubating and raising them in specially-constructed pens.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
“We are now taking the foundry part of what we had been incubating and creating that as a resource” for the U.S. government, he said.
From MarketWatch ● May 22, 2026
Curiously, DDT did not kill the birds outright, but rather caused their eggshells to collapse under the weight of the incubating adults.
From Slate ● Feb. 21, 2026
He’d traveled around the Midwest on a summer rec-league team that featured an incubating superstar named Isaiah Thomas, who would later go on to a Hall of Fame career in the NBA.
From "Becoming" by Michelle Obama
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
